Scott Ian on Upcoming Anthrax Album: ‘This S–t Is a Real Kick in the Ass!’

We recently caught up with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian shortly before the thrash legend took the stage for his March 5 'Speaking Words' performance in New York City. During our chat, Scott Ian radiated excitement for Anthrax's next album, explaining in great detail what his "perfect schedule" is for writing and recording Anthrax's new offering.

During our exclusive interview with Scott Ian, the guitarist discussed his one-man 'Speaking Words' show and played a round of 'Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?', so look out for those videos in the near future. For now, however, we've got the latest on Anthrax's follow-up to their 2011 full-length, 'Worship Music.'

"I think it's pretty much going to be a case of where we're just gonna keep going at this point," begins Ian. "Not to put any kind of schedule or deadline on anything because we don't do that, but we go to Europe at the end of May to play festivals and I would probably think we'll just write all the way up to that. A perfect schedule in my brain at this point would be to just continue writing. Even better stuff is coming now and stuff is sounding better now and the songs are coming out better now than stuff that was even in the earlier parts of the writing process, so why would we stop ourselves at this point?"

"If we write all the way up until the end of May and then we head off to Europe, maybe we'll all be together on the bus and at sound checks and we can start jamming that stuff and really start focusing on the melody lines for the songs," the guitarist adds. "I gotta catch up on lyrics, I'm only about five or six songs in on lyrics and we're working on about 14 right now and there's probably gonna be more music coming. When we get back from Europe, then maybe we'll live with it for a little bit and hopefully get together and really play the songs for like a week and really learn them and really own them and know where we're at with them. Then, I think, maybe we'll be comfortable to get in and actually start recording it."

Ian concludes, "We just don't want to rush anything. There was obviously a lot of time before 'Worship Music,' but once things started happening, things started to move really fast. One of the things we had was we did have a lot of hindsight and we were able to go back and take those songs and rework them and know what we wanted to change. We're not gonna do that this time. We're not gonna write a record, sit on it for a year and then go back on it. We love the last record and this one has got to be f---ing good. I think we've got it. Even though the songs are not complete, this s--t is a real kick in the ass!"